


Connect the Dots

by kSciFi (shatterdame)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Blood, Drugs, Kind of Fluff but kind of Angst, Kind of Hurt/Comfort, Self Harm, Tattoos, Tripping Newt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 05:52:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2218176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterdame/pseuds/kSciFi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt finds himself tripping on acid. Hermann is left to pick up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Connect the Dots

**Author's Note:**

> Our first joint fic- Find Newt's author at D is for Dangerous and Hermann's at Oxford Comma, both can be found under Shatterdame. The idea of a joint fic is currently a bit of an experiment. Comments and constructive criticism are both very welcome!!! Enjoy!

Somewhere in the distance, the shattering of a beaker careens through the silence. Bad rock music follows. Frantic footsteps. A coffee mug slammed on a desk. Fingers rifling through book pages. Chalk on a white board. A cane on a concrete floor. And Newt knows where each sound comes from, and which sound belongs to what moment that Newt experienced in the last twenty-four hours, but is too high to care enough to make sense of it all.

Electricity jumps through Newt’s body. It runs through his veins and for once he is unconcerned about red blood vs Kaiju blue because color doesn’t matter when his own blood feels like fire tearing through him. And he doesn’t mind. It doesn’t burn the way burning himself with hydrofluoric acid in the lab does. It doesn’t hurt. It brings him to life, making everything simultaneously seem too sharp and too dull. It creates hypersensitivity that makes his world fuzzy around the edges. It’s too much and not enough and everything about it feels like a contradiction. There aren’t extra colors or swirling mirages like one might imagine. Only electricity. The two little tabs that looked too much like the innocent candy drops he used to peel off paper and swallow as a child have made him wonder why he doesn’t spend every day on acid.

He swore off it after K-Day. He remembers that before frantically pushing it out of his mind. He remembers that he used to drop a tab or two and work out equations with a seemingly sharpened mind. But after too many times of waking up and finding nonsense numbers and doodles on his paper, he decided he better stick with his genius IQ and sheer determination. Now that the world depended on it.

But the buzzing in his head refuses to let him regret his decision to seek out the contraband from that one Mechanical Engineering intern whose name Newt can’t bother to remember. After the day Newt had, he couldn’t be expected to just keeping going. He couldn’t just go to sleep and wake up and keep working as usual. At least, that’s what he muttered to himself as he sat on the edge of his bed, wide eyed and shaking.

An attack hit today. Two weeks earlier than expected. The largest amounts of dead since the Jaeger Program was developed. And Newt couldn’t even get his hands on any of the remains of the Kaiju, deemed Obsidius, because the Jaeger had blasted it entirely to pieces in the end. Newt couldn’t even help. His complete uselessness rattling around the for-once-emptiness of his head, he felt justified in letting himself forget.

Forget. That’s what he wanted. He wanted to listen to Aerosmith and lay on the floor with his body humming and the room shaking and forget this day. At least until he woke up the next morning. He wanted his few sweet hours of nothingness. _So why was he still sitting on his fucking bed thinking of the Kaiju?_

Before his head could catch up with his feet, he was running towards the lab. Stumbling over himself, Newt fell when he took a corner too fast, but he didn’t feel it. After he picked himself up off the ground, he wasn’t even sure it had happened. A moment later, he threw himself into the lab, making record time. It was only now that he realized why he was here. He had been looking at this the wrong way. When Newt thought about forgetting the Kaiju he felt something akin to homesickness twist through his stomach. He abandoned all desire to forget, instead wanting to make this moment permanent. 

Not pausing to check his surroundings, he started rummaging through drawers. He threw aside pieces of paper, office supplies, and anything else that found his frantic hands. Newt’s drug-induced sensitivity made every sound tear through the room like thunder. His fingertips twitched as he searched for his black sharpie, not stopping until he found it.

Dropping to his knees, he clutched his sharpie until his knuckles were white. He used his free hand to shove aside everything he had thrown to the floor until he found the largest gauge safety pin he knew he had. Stumbling to his feet, Newt takes it to the Bunsen Burner and heats the pin until it burns and swabs it with isopropyl alcohol. The smell of it fills his nose and clouds his mind and he briefly wonders how there is room for anything else in his head.

Newt knows that the sharpie isn’t right, that the safety pin isn’t right, that absolutely none of this is right and he doesn’t care.

Newt flings himself back onto the ground, amidst the piles of office supplies that were thrown from his drawer. He starts to unbutton his shirt from the bottom, his fingers trembling from the drugs coursing through his burning veins, and he has three left when he gets impatient and tears them off. He pulls only his left hand out of it’s sleeve, the white polyester blend sliding off his skin like water, still draped over his right shoulder and arm.

Somehow the pin blindly finds the sharpie, and then his own skin. Newt stabs the pin into his epidermis, creating a tiny black dot of ink on his inner left wrist. It appears just over the faint blueness of his veins filled with Kaiju blue or molten fire or perhaps nothing at all. He rubs the sharpie against the pin again, and repeats. He stops only to use his shirtsleeve as a cloth, wiping away blood and access ink.

There’s a voice in the back of head that screams _infection._ Newt knows better than this. He knows this is stupid. He knows this is begging for an infection and ink poisoning and scabbing and numerous other disasters. But the voice in the back of his head is also screaming _fuck up_ at him and he remembers that he not only doesn’t care about infection, but is almost praying for it.

And just when the head of Obsidius is starting to show up on his wrist, he hears a noise that makes him jump. His fingers twitch, causing the pin to scrape his wrist open. There wasn’t enough ink to make a mark, but Newt feels blood trickle down his arm. He ignores it, his mind hyper aware of the cane-on-concrete sound that he knows too well. And it gets closer. Newt fights the urge to bolt from the lab.

Hermann’s face appears from above Newt’s desk. Newt watches as Hermann takes Newt in, his expression going from confusion to anger to horror in a second flat. Newt looks at his bleeding wrist, then back up at Hermann, unsure of himself. He wonders why Hermann is in the lab at this hour. He tries to stop himself, but he also wonders what Hermann thinks of Newt in this moment. Before Newt can figure out how to explain himself, Hermann is leaning down, a mix of concern and pain- no doubt from his leg- on his face. Hermann is less than a foot from Newt’s face. Hermann with his stupid hair and ugly sweater vest and big ears and Newt can’t stop staring at him with glazed eyes. Newt stares until he isn’t sure what he’s looking at anymore. He’s wondering if this is what an eternity means when Hermann grabs his wrist and looks into his empty eyes.

“Newton,” he said, voice full of something Newt can’t place. Exasperation, maybe.

And then his whole body hums and it feels like there are bees crawling up his throat and stinging his lips as he questions, “Hermann?”

*** 

Hermann does not overreact. In almost all situations, Hermann is a very reasonable, level-headed person. He credits this to his early fascination with Newton’s laws of physics. That was well before he met _Newt_ who seems to have his own unique set of rules that usually leave Hermann with more aches and pains than his science textbook ever did. It is for this reason that overreacting is usually Newton’s department and currently he is sitting on the floor of their shared lab, bloodied shirt hanging half off with a safety pin jammed into his forearm. Hermann isn’t entirely sure what’s happening, but he has the distinct feeling there is about to be an equal and opposite reaction.

Hermann starts moving forward slowly, worried Newton will scare easily. He looks like a caged animal, frozen and doe eyed with his hand slightly shaking where it holds the safety pin. It isn’t until he’s only a foot away that he realizes there is ink swirling with the blood over his skin. Hermann spots the sharpie on the floor and sighs like he should have expected this all along. He reaches out and curls his hand around Newton’s wrist, rubbing his thumb along the soft skin. 

“Newton,” he says, unsure of what he wants to say. It comes out softer than his usual scolding, but it’s enough for Newton to twitch and look slightly embarrassed - as embarrassed as he can be in his current state.

“Hermann?” Newton’s eyes are huge and glassy and unsettling. Hermann’s never had a conversation with Newton about drugs, legal or otherwise, and Newton is so unpredictable he’d never be able to tell anyway. Now though he’s pretty sure there’s something amiss and Hermann knows this is just another situation for which he has no frame of reference. He decides to follow general protocol and get the facts straight. He keeps Newton’s arm in his grasp as he sets down his cane and gingerly gets on his knees.

“Newton,” he begins quietly, reaching his other hand towards him in invitation. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I was um…” Newton finally tears his eyes away from Hermann and looks down at the hand on his arm. He looks back up at Hermann and he suddenly seems very small. He blinks a few times before squeezing his eyes tightly shut as if trying to remember. The official and distant facade Hermann was attempting starts to rapidly deflate as he watches Newton struggle with whatever demon has found him. He slowly pulls the pin away from his arm, fresh blood blooming on his skin, and places it gently in Hermann’s outstretched hand. Hermann begins to roll it around in his palm, examining it.

“Everything was so… loud. I wanted - I don’t know. I wanted to forget.” He’s slowly coming back to himself and the crash is hitting him hard. He makes a small pained noise, pulling Hermann’s attention away from his hand. Hermann fumbles in his coat pocket before producing a handkerchief, pressing it to Newton’s forearm. Hermann’s vaguely aware he’s being watched. He’s been quiet this whole time and Newton’s eyes are flicking rapidly back and forth.

Although Newton has done many a questionable thing, Hermann has never found him quite this vulnerable. When Hermann found Newton plugged into a Kaiju brain he promptly fell unconscious. When he woke he found an angry, shouting Hermann, completely unaware of his frantic calls of _“Newton, please, don’t”_ only a few minutes earlier. This Newton was very much awake and waiting for his response and Hermann suddenly felt like the vulnerable one. He wanted to hate Newton for this, for forcing his hand emotionally - for manipulating him, for assuming he would come rushing in to save the day. He wanted -

Newton sniffed and Hermann looked up to see him, teary eyed. He was squinting, as if trying not to cry, nudging his glasses up with his shoulder to cover his face. He was in pain and coming down from a high, but Hermann knew at once Newton felt guilty. He was curling in on himself as though he just now realized his situation. Hermann was suddenly dizzy, recalling an image from the drift in which a younger Newt with similar marks on his arms cried as another stood over him. The secondhand deja-vu nearly knocked Hermann over and he felt sick.

He wanted Newton to stop crying.

Hermann gently removed his hand from the handkerchief and replaced it with Newton’s free hand, rubbing his thumb absently over his knuckles. He let out a deep breath before finding his personal handkerchief in his pants pocket, emblazoned with H. G. in green lettering. He slipped Newton’s glasses from his face before dabbing at his cheeks with the cloth. 

“A man should never leave the house without a spare handkerchief,” he said, refolding the square and placing it back in his pocket. He smiled briefly, nudging Newton’s chin upwards. He ran the pad of his thumb along Newton’s jaw before looking back towards his arm.

“We need to talk. About this,” he laid his hand over Newton’s atop the handkerchief. “About a lot of things - but first, I am going to find some kind of antibiotic and some bandages and if you make any sort of comment about my room I will be _significantly_ less gentle.”


End file.
